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World News Quick Take

■ Pakistan
Terror suspects arrested
Pakistani agents are struggling to determine whether an al-Qaeda leader is among seven suspected members of the terror group arrested in a weekend raid, and they've called in the FBI to help interrogate them, intelligence officials said yesterday. Officials said the suspects were two Egyptian and three Afghan men, and two Arab women. They wouldn't identify them further, and there's been no word on whether they were believed to be engaged in an active plot. They were arrested in a raid on an apartment complex on Sunday, a day after President Pervez Musharraf renewed Pakistan's vow to fight terrorism.

■ Hong Kong
Subversion law put on hold
Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) has no plans to push again for anti-subversion legislation that sparked massive protests earlier and forced him to back down on the issue, an adviser said in an interview published yesterday. But Hong Kong's mini-constitution requires such a law -- and if Tung doesn't try again before his current and final term ends in 2007, the task would still be left to another chief executive. Tung adviser Lau Siu-kai told the South China Morning Post that "there is definitely no agenda" to pass an anti-subversion bill before Tung's term ends. The timing of a new bill depends on "whether there is an opportunity and favorable opinion," said Lau, who heads the Central Policy Unit that advises Tung.

■ Japan
Used panty trade pondered
Tokyo's used panty sellers are among the targets of a raft of new regulations to be considered by city lawmakers in an effort to protect minors from the Japanese capital's thriving sex industry. Finding a way of preventing the lucrative trade in young girls' underwear, which media say can command ?10,000 (US$94) a pair at sex shops, is among recommendations in a report presented to the city yesterday by an advisory body on youth issues. Operators of sidewalk vending machines that dispense pornography are also likely to be asked to ensure that sales are not made to minors by requiring that all machines accept a drivers' licence as proof of age.

■ Philippines
Pope can't stop executions
Even an appeal from Pope John Paul II would fail to stop the executions of two convicted kidnappers later this month in the Philippines, the president's spokesman said yesterday. Only the president or the Supreme Court can stop the Jan. 30 executions, the first in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation since 2000. "Only a judicial intervention can prevent the scheduled execution at the end of the month," Ignacio Bunye, a spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said after opponents of the death penalty urged influential Catholic leaders to seek the pope's intervention to save the lives of convicts Roberto Lara and Roderick Licayan.

■ South Korea
Troop withdrawal `no worry'
President Roh Moo-hyun has said the decision to pull all US troops out of metropolitan Seoul will not weaken South Korea's security against North Korean military threats. "There is nothing to worry about it at all," Roh said when he met leaders of the pro-government Uri Party Sunday evening. The agreement between the US and South Korea to relocate 7,000 US troops and family members from their base smack in the center of Seoul will make the South Korean capital free of foreign troops for the first time in a century.

■ Austria
IAEA wants Libya control
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be the sole agency verifying the disarmament of Libya's nuclear program and the US role should be to supply logistical support, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday as he went in to a meeting with top US and British diplomats. "The agency mandate is clear. The agency has to perform its role thoroughly and independently ... Our role in verification is very clear. We do all the verification, nothing but verification," ElBaradei said as he went into talks with John Bolton, US undersecretary of state for arms control and nuclear proliferation.

■ Ireland
Airliner bomb a hoax
A Delta Air Lines jet traveling from Germany to the US made an emergency landing in Ireland Sunday because of a bomb threat that turned out to be unsubstantiated, police and airport authorities said. Frankfurt-to-Atlanta Flight 27 landed at Shannon airport in the west of Ireland after the crew discovered a note in a toilet suggesting there could be a bomb aboard the plane, said Siobhan Moore, spokeswoman for airport operating company Aer Rianta. Delta said the plane landed three hours after takeoff from Frankfurt. Hours later, investigators finished a search of the plane and determined that no bombs were aboard, said Martin Casey of the Irish police.

■ Haiti
Violence in Aristide protest
One person was killed and five were wounded on Sunday when gunmen took to the streets to break up an anti-government demonstration in Haiti's capital. People hiding in alleys and on rooftops threw rocks and bottles and fired shots as thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched through the streets of Port-au-Prince. The protest, like many in recent weeks, was organized by leaders of a coalition intent on forcing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign. Several thousand students and others walked and ran up and down the capital's hilly streets for almost four hours, chanting anti-Aristide slogans.

■ Russia
World's oldest person
A Chechen great-great-grandmother born in 1881 could be the oldest person in the world, Russian state television reported, saying she beat the current record-holder by eight years. Pasikhat Dzhukalayeva has nine grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren who call her `Granny s.' "I do not know why I have lived so long. I have buried five brothers and sisters, and four children," said the wrinkled Dzhukalayeva, who moves around in a wheelchair. She showed off a passport giving her year of birth.

■ Great Britain
Assaults on Hawking feared
British police are investigating a series of alleged mysterious assaults on disabled top British scientist Stephen Hawking, the Daily Mirror reported. The paper said detectives wanted to question Hawking, a Cambridge University professor and author of the best selling Brief History of Time, about a number of minor injuries he had recently suffered. "The family are worried sick. They've been suspicious for some time that someone has been harming Stephen," an unnamed source told the paper. The world famous physicist is confined to a wheelchair after contracting motor neurone disease, a muscle-wasting condition, while at university. He can only speak through a computerized voice synthesizer.

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